In PvE I don't see it as such a bit problem but in PvP it sucks. I don't see other classes/specs having to choose (as elemental does) between their big damage contributors (FS/ES) and slowing someone down (Frost Shock does like no damage anyway), especially now that everyone has several ways to get out of snares. The closest thing to this are paladin seals but still seal damage hardly compares to the system of flame shock, lava burst, surge procs, etc. Just another old relic of an ancient age. I truly hope shamans get a revamp in the next expansion and shocks get unhooked from the common cd.

The moment when, thanks to transmogrification, your character selection screen looks like the cast of the Downton Abbey.

When shamans were released Shocks were grossly over powered, Earth Shock - no cd, interrupt and Frost Shock - no cd, slow. It was a pvp change to make shocks on the same cd and now its just part of the class design, making it one of the remaining elements that make a class unique. Considering Shamans dont have any "class resource" its balance behind that now. I know class design is a foreign concept these days, its still important even if every one wants every class to be the same.

Mentioning the shocks cd management as the "hard" part of the elemental shaman rotation shows how easy is the rotation. Shock shared cd belongs to another era and must be removed. We need some serious mecchanics in order to make elemental rotation less easy and boring. IMO.

There are no "hard parts" to any rotation in the game. Every mechanic is dead simple and boring when you consider it separate from everything else.

It's easy to mash buttons and get some DPS. The challenge is optimizing those button presses. While that's not rocket science, for any class, Elemental isn't noticeably easier than most.

I'm fine with Earth and Flame sharing a cooldown, people think it adds depth to the spec and for the most part is a decent mechanic. Just remove Frost Shock. It is so frusterating not to be able to DPS when you need to keep something slowed.

I don't have the link on me (mobile) but GC was asked about removing Flame Shocks cooldown recently and it ain't going to happen.

No limit on the amount of Flame Shocks you can blanket on a team in BGs resulting in uninterruptible burst (outside of silence and cc) is a logistical nightmare.

From a PVE perspective I do agree it sucks to sit on a multidot fight like Heroic Council or Dark Animus, but a solution needs to be thought out rationally and not just "remove cd please" with no thought to ramifications.

There are no "hard parts" to any rotation in the game. Every mechanic is dead simple and boring when you consider it separate from everything else.

It's easy to mash buttons and get some DPS. The challenge is optimizing those button presses. While that's not rocket science, for any class, Elemental isn't noticeably easier than most.

i disagree. every class has some sort of mechanic that define how well you play your class. I think the elemental is too linear, ''predictable'' and without serious consequences in case of errors. i don't like it.
But it's my opinion, not the Bible.

i disagree. every class has some sort of mechanic that define how well you play your class. I think the elemental is too linear, ''predictable'' and without serious consequences in case of errors. i don't like it.
But it's my opinion, not the Bible.

Originally Posted by Cianial

i disagree. every class has some sort of mechanic that define how well you play your class. I think the elemental is too linear, ''predictable'' and without serious consequences in case of errors. i don't like it.
But it's my opinion, not the Bible.

I agree with this and respectfully disagree with endus. I won't debate how "easy" all wow class rotations are, but I will say that the FS/ES shared cool down has little to no real decision making. There should be rotational challenges yes, but the shared cool down isn't it. It's just a relic from older WOW.

Right now, most elemental
Shaman can't even react to most procs beyond the meta/list procs and even then it's usually not worth it. Example is flame shock. It's damage is minimal, making its real value it's "hasted ticks" proccing Lava Burst. And even then, as bink himself has said, you only
Recast flameshock with haste procs IF you can stand to gain more ticks than you lose. The window for this is often very small and ignoring would probably yield little if any dps improvement - maybe a handful extra lvb proc over the entire fight.

This is unlike many other classes (casters or even some
Melee) who make intelligent use of procs to increase dps often significantly. Eg fabled feather for unholy or even retribution's execution sentence, or UVLS with multi dot classes.

In most cases due to the shared ES/FlS cool down its not like you intentionally hold off casting a shock to line up perfectly with a wushoolays max proc or cha yes int proc. it feels like if you're "lucky" enough to be at/near a full 7 stack fulminations then you gain the optimal benefit of the proc. I doubt any shaman would intentionally keep lightning bolting when they are at 7 stacks when wooshulays has JUST begin to stack its proc. you just fire it off anyway. Hardly a difficult or tactical decision.

As what the above poster said, our shared CD makes our rotation really linear and unable
to use intelligent play to maximize dps (and in wow gaming trinket procs is a large part of that so the problem is compounded - see demo locks using unerring vision to game dozens of imps - ridiculous and doubles/triples their dps even). It definitely needs to be made to flexible
Enough so a smart player can noticeably outshine a mediocre one.

As a side comment I do feel part of reason why it's under the radar is simply that
Raiding elemental
Shaman are propped up by how OP chain lightning is this tier. Its kinda fun to play as emperor palpatine but sometimes my other heroic raiders jibe at how I'm almost one button spec for this tier. It's obviously not 100% true but a lot more true than I'd like it to be. Wonder if Earthquake could be tooled to be our "proc gaming spell" that would make a good ele
Stand out.

I dont think so, that the change is needed at all, in PvE it wouldn't change that much, most of the time for ele Lava Burst or LB or CL is better than an instant shock, and for enhance, you are already at the limit of your global cds.

As for PvP, it would definitly bring lot of changes, im 100% they would remove frost shock root then and probably the -% dmg debuff from ES too. I would say, just "Meh and deal with it"

i disagree. every class has some sort of mechanic that define how well you play your class. I think the elemental is too linear, ''predictable'' and without serious consequences in case of errors. i don't like it.
But it's my opinion, not the Bible.

I'm not really sure what you're driving at; mismanaging shocks, using Fire Elemental at a bad time, or not using Surge procs is about as detrimental as other typical class mistakes. Some classes are more punitive, and some are less punitive (ever look at DPEs for BM hunters), but the difficulty isn't massively different for the most part.

i'd rather it didn't thats mean we'd take a heavy nerf on single target damage because blizzard would have to greatly lower the proc chance of lava surge, imagine council 4 mobs, start the fight usual pull, ascendance cds etc, then flame shock all 4 bosses....now you're basically spamming lava burst the whole fight......yeh that's not going to be allowed so lava surge would drop to like 8%, now single target fights like lei shen( no adds are alive long enough to flame shock) our single target plummets because we're dependant on having 3-4 flame shocks up.

Take a look at Fire Mage's rotation. Now take a look at mage T16 4p set bonus. With it, on the PTR, I spammed IB and Pyroblast non-stop for like 3 minutes. And that's because the boss died and couldn't take any more.

People keep saying "Remove the CD on Flame Shock", that would obviously make things out of control PvP wise. The topic is about the SHARED CD of shocks that needs to be removed, not the CD entirely, the 6 sec cooldown needs to stay for each individual shock but the SHARED CD for each, needs to be obliterated. Yes, obliterated, Its awful for PvP, the change would make PvP much less frustrating and wouldn't have any signification ramifications to PvE.

TLDR; Remove the SHARED CD on Shocks, not the cooldown entirely, 6 Second CD stays.